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Will my psu be enough to run this graphics card?

Surfer

Surfer

Surfer

Soldato
Joined
31 Dec 2005
Posts
11,179
Location
Glasgow
Quite tempted by the weekly sale for this card

Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

£199

but my PSU is only this

SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black

And as i understand it the 290s really need something like a 650w or 750w psu (according to spec requirements)

If i need to get another psu then its no longer worthwhile to get because i may as well get either of these Nvidia offerings because they will run on a 550w psu.

MSI NVIDIA GTX 970 Gaming Twin Frozr HDMI DVI-I DP Graphics Card

£280 ish

or the

Palit Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Graphics Card (4GB, GDDR5, PCI Express 3.0)

£250 ish


What do you reckon? And has anyone else bought a Palit 970? Curious why its so much cheaper than the MSI
 
It's fine. I'm running the MSI 290 on the same PSU.

Spec requirements are to cover AMDs behind in case you have a Q-Tec or another el cheapo PSU.
 
Q-Tec with a 290 (shudders), now that would be a disaster.

Your psu is a high quality unit and will be fine for just about any single card setup.

As far as the 970's go, reviews have shown sli 970's pulling a total system power of only 450w. Maxwell is extremely efficient.
 
I run a 970 on the same 550W PSU.

The difference between the cheap 970's and the expensive ones are the quality of the cooling.

The cheap cards will have crappy fans / heatsinks which will just about keep the card under the temp limit at factory settings. The expensive cards have premium fans / heatsinks which allow the graphics card to run cooler which in turn allows you to overclock.

If you don't wanna overclock, and don't mind loud fans under heavy usage, the cheaper 970's are fine. If you wanna overclock or loud fan noises bother you, get one of the £280+ models.
 
Yes. It's a Superflower built unit based on the Leadex Gold platform. Personally I wouldn't want to run crossfire 290/290X on anything less than 850w, especially the 290X's.
 
MagicBoy said:
It's fine. I'm running the MSI 290 on the same PSU.

Spec requirements are to cover AMDs behind in case you have a Q-Tec or another el cheapo PSU.
Click to expand...

Ahhh ok great :D I know i could get a 970 if i pay an extra £50 or £70 but ive had a look at some reviews for the PCs+ and it seems good (there was an early batch of them which had problems needing bios updates etc). It performs bit better than the reference 290s and not so far fps wise from a 290x or a 970 for me to justify splashing more cash. I feel it can run most if not all things at high /very high at 1080p. And the price point for me is in the magical sweet spot at just under £200.
 
Surfer said:
Ahhh ok great :D I know i could get a 970 if i pay an extra £50 or £70 but ive had a look at some reviews for the PCs+ and it seems good (there was an early batch of them which had problems needing bios updates etc). It performs bit better than the reference 290s and not so far fps wise from a 290x or a 970 for me to justify splashing more cash. I feel it can run most if not all things at high /very high at 1080p. And the price point for me is in the magical sweet spot at just under £200.
Click to expand...

I looked at the 970, got deterred by the coil whine issues as the rest of my system is very quiet. Might have dodged a bullet with 3.5GB-gate.

I'm very happy with the 290. Very quiet, very fast. Went with the MSI as it replaced a 5850 Twin Frozr and the cooler was excellent.
 
hrmm minor update.

So alls been well with the card has been very good

idles at 29 - 30
load usually 60 or 70 (if its something like shadow of mordor)

I was watching netflix on the TV via hdmi to pc and for some reason i get a black screen...the sound continues and the keyboard still seemed to work though i had to do a soft restart (ctrl alt del didnt work) When i unplug and plug in the hdmi cable the tv screen went green..if that means anything?

I find this odd because ive watched netflix via tv and pc for hours at a time last week and everything has been fine.

On latest catalyst 14.12 cataylst omega drivers.

I will try watching netflix on pc and see if i get a black screen on the monitor.

This odd error has not occurred when playing any games (yet!)
 
hrmm ok have replicated problem on pc. tried watching netflix and after 10 mins screen goes black..the movie sound continues but keyboard is inoperable. Have to restart pc.

Will see if it happens in games as well

oh the joys of pcs!
 
False Alarm :D

think I fixed it. Seems to be a problem with Netflix and chrome. Tried IE with Netflix and its fine so far.

:D
 
I have crossfired 290Xs, as well as a heavily overclocked FX CPU, and the whole system never tops 700W from the wall.
 
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